James Baker: Gorbachev will be remembered as ‘giant’ who steered his nation toward democracy

The Hill ^ | 08/31/2022 | OLAFIMIHAN OSHIN

[EastTexasTraveler]

Gorbachev was somewhat of a reformer, but he was still a communist. Most of his reforms were done because he did not have much choice.

[Chad_the_Impaler]

He could have done what communist regimes have done throughout history and simply cracked down on his people, but he didn’t. For that, I have always had some admiration for him because he put himself at great personal risk doing what he did.

Gorbachev let the countries of Eastern Europe go their own way in 1990, but there was a crackdown in Vilnius Lithuania (part of USSR) in January 1991. After that failure, force was not used in the former republics who wanted independence. The role of Mikhail Gorbachev in the January events remains disputed.

[Vaden]

James Baker was always a nimrod. Russia has never been a democracy and it never will be.

[dfwgator]

Baker is an anti-Israel jew-hater.

[j.havenfarm]

I paraphrase Lech Walesa: “Gorbachev tried to save communism and they gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for failing.” It’s hard to judge people outside of their historical context. On the whole I’ll give him props for doing the right thing by bringing freedoms, though freedoms limited by the communist context in which they rose and freeedomes calculated to try to prop up the soviet state

[Drew68]

It isn’t and neither are we. Democracy is mob rule.

What do you think a statewide or a congressional district election is? The winner is the person who gets the most votes. Mob rule.

[Parmy]

I had thought he had already died.

[Vaden]

100% EXACTLY.

[muir_redwoods]

Gorbachev’s big accomplishment was to lose the Cold War.

[Joe 6-pack]

"The 1st one to cause a rivet to pop out of the Iron Curtain was Saint JP II."

Lech Walesa and Jerzy Popiełuszko were pushing from the inside around the same time JP II started pulling from the outside.

[TBP]

Even a crazy RINO Bushie globalist like Baker can’t actually believe that.

[piasa]

Gorbachev should be remembered as the dang communist who helped promote the manmade climate change/global warming lunacy.

[hoagy62]

Ooh...good point.

[Jordantalks]

Another nuclear disaster inc for sure.
You can’t just give more and more guns to boys while you’re not explain’em something. It’s too risky!
https://intressmedia.com/

[wardaddy]

Truth

[wardaddy]

When was Ukraine or us for that matter

Russia is certainly more free and property rights than it was before the fall of the SOVIETS

oligarch autocracy not uncommon in that region of the world

[tanstaafl.72555]

I am sorry to have avoided your question. I have been very busy here. The truth is that I do not know about any confrontations Gorbachev and Putin may or may not have had.

Putin is an enigma to me. He is clearly a thug, a dictator, and a vicious man. He also seems to genuinely love Russia (though not so much a he loves Putin!). He *seems* to have a romantic attachment to “the fatherland” that is common to Russians, and that makes Americans standing with hands over hearts warbling about amber waves of grain and thinking of marines on Iwo Jima, seem shallow by comparison. They really do love the fatherland with an intensity I don’t understand. Putin seems to be genuine in that regard, and to want to restore Russia to “greatness.” I dunno much past that extremely surface analysis and understanding, shallow as it is.